Referee Odie Brown talks about meeting Vince McMahon; being in a WWE Braun Strowman-Kevin Owens segment and the life of a wrestling referee (Exclusive)

Being an extra in WWE and meeting Vince McMahon

Referee Odie Brown mentioned how he got a job as an extra in WWE. He was in the segment where Kevin Owens' car was decimated by Braun Strowman.

"It was a really memorable experience. We were in San Diego, California. It was a very out of nowhere decision that they made. They kind of came up and asked us a question and I responded first and they were like alright, cool, come on, you are going to be the valet, sounds good? It was very surreal. Vince McMahon was actually directing the thing himself. I walked up to the top of the ramp after I got my valet outfit on. He was standing there directing traffic and telling everyone where to stand and all of a sudden, before I knew it, I was taking directions from Vince McMahon. I was like, wow, what happened to my life, how did I get here. It was a very eye-opening experience, the kind that makes you realize how close you are to your goals. I got to have a very brief but nice one-on-one conversation with him while everybody else was running around doing their thing."

During this time, he had a one-on-one with the WWE Chairman, Vince McMahon.

"He was teasing me. In the scene, the only thing I really say is ‘I don’t have your keys, he does!’ He comes up to me… he is giving everybody directions and they have to talk among themselves. He just walks up, made his way back two feet away from me from the other side of the podium and says, ‘You know your line?’ I was like, yes sir. He said, ‘Alright, don’t mess up. You’re gonna be on my TV. Can you handle that?’ I said, yes sir. I’ll handle it. He then said, ‘alright let me hear it.’ He then just kind of made me run through the line a couple of times and told me how he wanted me to say it and that’s it. It was pretty incredible to watch him make effective decisions as quickly as he did because somebody that was organizing the scene before, they wanted to do the whole scene with four different cameras and the guy had just kind of made the whole thing a little bit complicated, so Vince was like No, no, no, no, we are gonna use one camera and we’re gonna do this, this, this and this. He just made it all so much simpler and it made so much more sense all in the matter of just ten seconds. Guy knows what he is doing obviously (laughs)."

He also talked about the other times he went in as an extra and the fascinating meetings he had with legends and performers.

"I’m more than happy to go in as an extra anytime they call me. I believe that was my third time doing it, and I’ve gone in a total of four times now. Any more times that I get to go, I’d be more than happy to. I never really did anything that was as recognizable as that. But maybe about a year before that, I was kind of a guy standing in a hallway when Sami Zayn was walking by. The next night on SmackDown was the same thing with either Kevin Owens or Finn Balor. I think the fourth time I went I was not even used for anything, which is fine because sometimes they don’t need to."

"You are in catering for the majority of the day, just waiting to see if you are going to be used for anything. I spent a large part of the day with the referees and I got to pick their brains. The Cruiserweights are there throughout the majority of the day for RAW and SmackDown, I spent a lot of the time with them. Then whoever comes through catering throughout the day. I got to overhear Arn Anderson picking apart Tag Team Wrestling at one point. On one RAW, I was sitting down at a table and Jerry ‘The King’ came and sat down. He talked to us about Andy Kauffman and the anniversary that had gone by. Just little interactions that you would not even expect to have. I had a really nice conversation with the IIconics too, a year or so back. "